When your child is anxious, everything in you wants to make it stop.
Pull them out of the situation. Take away the thing that's scaring them. Tell them it's going to be fine. It comes from love. But it can quietly communicate something you never intended: I don't think you can handle this.
And here's the thing about avoiding the stuff that makes us anxious. Every time we do it, the brain files it as confirmed dangerous. The anxiety doesn't shrink. It grows. Every time we go through something hard instead, even imperfectly, the brain updates its records: survived that. And slowly, the anxiety loosens.
Resilience isn't something you can hand a child. It comes from doing hard things and finding out you got through them. That evidence only builds if we let them have the experience.
Actually, anxiety isn't all bad
Before we talk about managing it, it's worth saying something that doesn't get said enough: anxiety has a job, and it does it pretty well.
It sharpens focus. It motivates preparation. It's why you perform better in an exam when you care than when you don't. Psychologists have known for over a century that some level of arousal, nerves, pressure, anticipation, that actually improves performance. Too little and you're flat. Too much and you fall apart. But that middle zone? That's where people do their best work.
There's also research from Harvard psychologist Alison Wood Brooks showing that when people reframe "I'm nervous" as "I'm excited," they actually perform better. The physical feeling is identical. Heart racing, butterflies, heightened alertness. The only thing that changes is the story you tell about it.
That's a genuinely useful thing to teach a kid. Nerves before something that matters aren't a sign that something is wrong. They're a sign that something is worth doing.
The problem isn't anxiety. It's when anxious thoughts start to feel like facts.
The thoughts worth knowing about
Anxious brains tend to run a few particular patterns. Worth naming because once you can spot them, they lose some of their grip.
Catastrophising. Assuming the worst case is the most likely one. "What if everything goes wrong?"Jumping to conclusions. "They'll all laugh at me" before anything has even happened.
Overgeneralising. "This always happens to me."
Personalising. "It's my fault."Black and white thinking. "Today was completely awful" when actually three things were hard and seven things were fine.
None of these are character flaws. They're just the brain's shortcuts under stress. The thought feels real and true in the moment. But it's a prediction, not a fact. And the brain is actually not that reliable at predictions.
The glitter jar
Here's a way to explain this to kids that tends to land.
Picture a glitter jar. When you shake it, the glitter spins and you can't see through it at all. That's what the brain is like when anxiety is running. Busy, loud, cloudy. The thinking part can't get through.
But if you put the jar down and just let it be, the glitter slowly settles. The water clears. That's what happens when we stop fighting the anxious thought and let it sit there without feeding it.
The goal isn't to get rid of the glitter. It's to let it settle so you can think again.
What kids can actually do
Notice the thought. Name it. "My amygdala is telling me that everyone is going to laugh." Putting a little distance between the child and the thought. It's something my brain is doing, not the truth about the world. That the first step.
Then let it be. Don't fight it, don't feed it. Just notice it and wait.
Some things that help with the waiting: saying the thought out loud in a silly voice, which sounds ridiculous but genuinely makes the thought feel lighter. Writing it down and ripping it up. The 5-4-3-2-1 senses check: five things you can see, four you can touch, three you can hear, two you can smell, one you can taste, which pulls the brain back into the present moment. For younger kids in that 5-10 age range, Aroha's Way by Wildling Books is a beautiful NZ picture book that weaves these kinds of tools into a story children can actually connect with. Deep breathing. Moving your body. Squeezing something tight and letting it go.
Then let it go. Focus on what's actually in front of you. What's in your control. What you'd tell a friend who was thinking the same thing.
What you can do as the adult in the room
The most useful thing you can do when your child is anxious is name the feeling, validate it, and then tell them you believe they can handle it.
Not "you'll be fine." Not "there's nothing to worry about." Something more like: "I can see this feels really scary. That makes sense. And I think you can do it. I'm right here. Let's try together, and if it gets too much, squeeze my hand three times and we'll stop."
That does a few things at once. It tells them their feeling is real and reasonable. It tells them you're not going to abandon them. And it tells them you believe in their capacity to cope.The other thing worth doing is letting them see you be scared and push through anyway. Make it visible. Take a big dramatic breath before something hard and say why. Get something wrong in front of them and try again. Show them what coping actually looks like in a real person, not a calm adult who has it all together.
Because the goal isn't a child who never feels anxious. It's a child who feels it and goes anyway.
Growing Minds Hub is here to support children, families, and educators in Rotorua, through a one-day-a-week learning programme, individualised educational psychology support, and workshops for parents and teachers. Find out more here.
Want to read more? Lynn Lyons and Reid Wilson's Anxious Kids, Anxious Parents flips the conventional approach on its head in exactly the right way. Genuinely useful. Find it here.
For the kids themselves. Aroha's Way by Wildling Books is a gorgeous NZ-made picture book for ages 4-10 that takes children through the emotions around anxiety and gives them real tools to manage them. One of those books kids come back to. Find it here.
References
Brooks, A.W. (2014). Get excited: Reappraising pre-performance anxiety as excitement. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(3), 1144–1158.
Yerkes, R.M., & Dodson, J.D. (1908). The relation of strength of stimulus to rapidity of habit formation. Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology, 18(5), 459–482.
Hayes, S.C., Strosahl, K.D., & Wilson, K.G. (2012). Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (2nd ed.). Guilford Press.
Lyons, L., & Wilson, R. (2013). Anxious Kids, Anxious Parents. Health Communications Inc.
Chorpita, B.F., & Barlow, D.H. (1998). The development of anxiety: The role of control in the early environment. Psychological Bulletin, 124(1), 3–21.
